Infernal rattle at tick-over

Argh. My car has just developed the loudest rattle known to man at tick-over rpm.

I've got the bonnet off and I think I've identified the source (unfortunately I didn't have my camera phone wiht me).

In the inlet tract, behind the MAF is what appears to be a mounting bracket - there's a bolt thread going through and I assume the MAF is meant to be attached to that via some sort of rubber bush mounting. But on my car, there is no bush or bracket or anything and the inlet tract/MAF is now vibrating madly against the aluminium spur.

Can someone with a TDi just check if there's supposed to be a bracket/ rubber bush here? If so can someone else very helpful then tell me what the part number should be so I can order it! It's so loud that I have to turn the engine off immediately when stationary as it's driving me insane. I even drove a different (longer) route to work this morning to avoid going through several sets of traffic lights!

I'm at work presently and my cars at home, but if nobody comes up with anything by this evening i'll have a look at mine and get back to you. Haven't got a clue about part numbers tho.

Thanks, very kind

mine had something similar . When i bought the noticed a rag under that inlet pipe thought that shouldn't be there , so removed it. Got in the car to drive off loud rattle thought Thats what that was doing. So i cable tyed it up off in to mid air no rattle now . Not sure if this the same but it sounds very similar

That's probably the same. Would be interested to know if there is a mounting bush missing/broken, or if I just need to jiggle the pipes around a bit more vigourously.

Is this any help?

Ok, on further inspection, it seems that my MAF is rattling against the engine mount. I suspect the garage didn't re-assemble the intake tract mountings quite correctly after the cambelt/waterpump was changed last week.

As you can see from these two photos, the MAF is too low. Just above the MAF on the next piece of hose is a mounting with a bolt through it, but this isn't attached to anything. I can't actually see where it's meant to go?

I can see that there is flex in the whole intake tract and that I can quite easily pull the assembly up by several inches, so it's clearly meant to sit elsewhere.

Can anybody give me any clues?

Oh well I couldn't work out where the correct mounting locations are, so it's back to the garage this afternoon to get them to fix their work

I seriuosly hate taking my car to a garage to hand over absurd amounts of money then getting my car back half baked.

Some muppet serviced my A Class once and i got back just as it was coming off the ramp with a shed load of bits and pieces sat on the side including some heavy looking plastic covers, what are they i asked "Oh you don't need all that mate" the muppet replied.

Around 3 weeks later the car broke down after going through one of those automated car washes. Called the AA and the ignition coil pack had blown up form being flooded with water, AA man was quick to point out that with the funny angle of that engine it was imperative that the enginge coil pack cover was inplace otherwise driving through a large puddle or in heavy rain at speed could short it out. £100 to replace both items and all because of some imbecile.

And now my car has gone into limp mode, no turbo boost. Must be leaking... FFS

Ok discovered what's happened here.
The curved rubber pipe downstream of the MAF has a mounting point formed into it, with a bolt in it - this is in my first picture. This bolts onto a spur bracket which projects off at an angle from a metal fixing which sits around and underneath the master cylinder. This provides the mounting to raise the MAF and hold the inlet tract in a fixed position (around which the flexible pipes can, er, flex, when the engine vibrates).

In my case, the metal bracket has sheared off completely. It looks like it has failed from metal fatigue - presumably due to the vibrations. This has dropped the MAF assembly by about 3cm down so that it's resting on the engine mount.

I've ordered up a replacement bracket and we'll see how that goes. No idea why it tripped limp-home today though